Things You Gotta Know
LLNL and Pacific Fusion Partnership Drives the Sirius Pulsed Power Prototype Past 3,000 Shots and a Peak Power Record
Pacific Fusion and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced that Sirius, an LLNL pulsed power prototype built on the impedance-matched Marx generator (IMG) architecture co-invented by Pacific Fusion CTO Keith LeChien during his time at the lab, has surpassed 3,000 shots, demonstrating the reliability and maturity of a new architecture designed to deliver short, powerful electrical pulses efficiently and repeatedly. Backed by more than $1 billion in private capital, Pacific Fusion has already scaled the same core technology into a prototype roughly 11 times larger, delivering the highest peak power ever demonstrated by a single-step pulsed power driver and offering a working example of how national lab breakthroughs can move rapidly into commercial infrastructure for high-gain fusion energy.
Inertia Unveils Its New Livermore Headquarters, Home to the World’s First Fusion Fuel Target Factory
Inertia Enterprises announced the opening of its new headquarters in Livermore, California, a 50,000 square foot facility that will house the world’s first fusion fuel target factory and the world’s most advanced high-energy laser system. The company, co-founded by CEO Jeff Lawson, CTO Mike Dunne, and Chief Scientist Annie Kritcher, has already built a fuel target manufacturing lab and a high precision metrology facility in six months, and has recruited manufacturing and supply chain leaders from Apple, Corning, Halliburton, Kairos, Edmund Optics, and Waymo. Located minutes from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, whose National Ignition Facility proved the physics behind Inertia’s laser indirect drive approach, the facility anchors the company’s strategic partnership with the lab as it pushes toward grid scale fusion power plants.
Oak Ridge, Cleveland Clinic, and IBM Complete the First Known Quantum Computations of Fusion Fuel Materials
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Cleveland Clinic, and IBM announced that they have calculated nine molecular configurations of FLiBe, the fluorine, lithium, and beryllium molten salt that is a leading candidate material for breeding tritium in fusion reactors, in the first known computations of fusion materials on a quantum computer. Published on arXiv, the work used quantum-centric supercomputing, pairing quantum processors with classical machines, to model how strongly different FLiBe configurations bind tritium at the molecular level, calculations that are difficult for classical computers to scale on their own. The team calls it a fundamental step toward optimizing tritium production, one of the hardest bottlenecks standing between fusion and abundant clean energy and a key objective of the Department of Energy’s Genesis Mission.
General Fusion Becomes the First Publicly Listed Fusion Company as GFUZ Begins Trading on the Nasdaq
General Fusion announced that its shares have begun trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker GFUZ following completion of its business combination with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. III, making it the first publicly listed fusion company. The Vancouver based Magnetized Target Fusion developer enters the public markets with approximately $150 million in cash to advance its LM26 demonstration program and its path to commercial fusion energy.
Commercial Fusion Energy Funding Status: Mid-Year 2026
The Fusion Report’s mid-year 2026 funding status finds total lifetime private funding for commercial fusion at $11.52B as of June 30, 2026, up roughly $2.4B from June 2025. Four companies now top $1B in lifetime funding: Commonwealth Fusion Systems ($2.923B), Helion Energy ($1.502B), TAE ($1.321B), and Shine Fusion ($1.040B). Major rounds in the period include CFS at $863M, Helion at $465M, Inertia at $450M, and $240M each for Shine Fusion and Focused Energy. Nuclear fission and SMR startups raised roughly $2B in the same window, while AI captured 70% of global VC funding in Q2 2026 alone. In a July postscript, Proxima Fusion raised 411M euros ($468M US) in new funding and General Fusion went public on the NASDAQ, lifting industry lifetime funding to $12.18B.
Realta Fusion Announces Madison Wisconsin For Its New Fusion Energy Headquarters and Research Facility
Realta Fusion announced that it will build its corporate headquarters and fusion research facility, The Realta Forge, at OM Station, the site of the iconic former Oscar Mayer plant in Madison, Wisconsin. The state of Wisconsin and the city of Madison committed up to $55 million to secure the selection, combining an estimated $37.5 million in state sales and use tax exemptions, up to $15 million in performance based enterprise zone tax credits, and $2.8 million in tax increment financing for job creation. Realta expects to create over 600 jobs at the facility and to break ground before the end of the year as it begins building Hammir, its prototype magnetic mirror fusion machine.
Arbor Energy: 3-D Printing Gas Turbines (and Money)
With wait times for large gas turbines now exceeding five years, Arbor Energy, founded by former SpaceX engineers, has raised a $55M Series A to advance its 25 MW modular Halcyon turbines, which combine rocket turbopump technology, a supercritical CO2 power cycle, and 3D-printed core components. The company has also secured an order from GridMarket for up to 200 units, reportedly worth billions of dollars.
